Folk Music And Jazz

[AllenLowe]

to me the ultimate issue is not blues vs non-blues but how the music and it's changes fit into the big picture of African American culture and African American methods of transformation - that's why, sorry to be a repeater pencil, the Levine book is a MUST -

Edited March 8, 2005 by AllenLowe

[Dr. Rat]

well, I would say the roots of soul are in the hard gospel movement, which has it's origins in the 1920s with the emergence of a freer, post-jubilee sound (greater use of floating lead singer); in 1937 the Soul Stirrers recorded "Walk Around" which is incredibly modern and free, and it is from this idea of lead singer vs group that we see the soul singer emerge (and later Archie Brownleee with the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi) - r&b has complicated roots and development; it's rhythms really come out, initially, of the swing era and can be traced through certain commercial big bands (like Lucky Millinder and Buddy Johnson) to the more small-group oriented work of the 1950s.

Let me add that, per all of this, that there is a book, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, by Lawrence Levine, which is essential reading - no other source traces the roots and development and causes of AfricanAmerican culture as clearly and powerfully as Levin does. If you're at all intersted in the subject, you should check it out. It has helped me immeasurably in evalutating and clarifying my own positions -

Ironically, Levine is Peretti's mentor. The student has not exceeded the master. At least not yet.

--eric

[JSngry]

So is, I would think, understanding the culture by expereincing it firsthand over time. Harder than reading or writing a book (no dis intended, honestly), but probably more informative over the long haul, although any of us who come at it "from the outside" probably need a little outside perspective beforehand. But today is just tommorrow's yesterday, so why not get it yourself now before somebody else writes about it afterwards?

Rhetorical question, btw.

[John L]

Allen: I agree with you very much on the Levine book.

[AllenLowe]

Levine is Peretti's mentor? A good argument for fratricide -

[Dr. Rat]

There's a certain slipperiness to the stew idea that seems to allow one to sometimes ignore categorical distinctions between something like "blues" and something like "gospel" and sometimes to make free use of said distinctions as if we all know what the distinctions are.

I'm not saying that you are being disingenuous--these are confusing matters. But we do quickly get to a point where we have to question why "gospel" seems to have a distinct identity and yet we steadfastly refuse to give one to blues--implying that, after all, all black music is suffused in the blues and all of it can be called blues or comes from blues and none can be said to be not blues.

To me this seems a lot like a reaction to Murray and company using "blues" as a stick. By emptying the word of any real significance we take the stick out of their hands. But "blues" just doesn't equal "good." It's not an evaluational term.

My reaction to most soul is that the blues elements in it are relatively small (and we have a show called "Blue Soul" here, mind, so I recognize there are exceptions) but soul music seems to me to come substantially out of church music traditions that in many cases explicitly repudiated blues and built a tradition that sounded disticntly different from the tradition they (the folks who helped create the gospel tradition) identified as "blues."

So I guess I see the stew--life always seems to be a stew--but I don't acknowledge referring to the stew as "blues" as a useful or desirable practice. I'm not sure I want to go all the way down the AllenLowe road by adopting a strict contructionist chord-sequence definition, but I think we need to have a more limited definition for the term to have much use.

--eric

It's "primal stew", not just "stew". Big difference. The basic ingredients-from which all evolution preceeds, to be found in various combinations, proportions, and mutations as the evolution proceeds. Yet, elements that can nevertheless be identified.

No need to ignore categorical distinctions, just as there's no need to overlook commonalities.

Gospel and blues have different identities simply because they are different strains of evolution and have picked up distinct traits along the way. Yet, the common traits allow for frequent and fertile cross-pollination, which in turn further the evolution of each. "Different" & "distinct" need not mean totally different or totally distinct.

No, not all African-American music is infused in the blues, simply because not all Africans became Americans under the same circumstances, nor have they experienced the cultural dynamics afterwards. Any talk such as this is (or should be) based on generalities, what can "safely" (hopefully...) be presumed to be "the norm", based on what can objectively, in terms of simple numbers, be observed to be the rule, rather than the exception. Anything that does not allow for variances, even minor ones, or consideration thereof, is barking up the wrong tree, I think. Absolut is a vodka, not a sound sociological principle.

As well, the notion that there is a primal stew should certainly not imply that influences from "outside" said stew can't or shouldn't find a place in the evolutional mix. Jazz itself is vivid proof of how wrong a notion that is. But they come into the mix, they don't destroy it. The same fundamental elements of the stew continue on. Change is not necessarily destruction.

Soul comes from gospel? Well, yeah, but Gospel itself came out an infusion of blues "elements", many of which themselves, as Mr. Litwack suggested, may well be traceable back to pre-blues music. "Gospel" and "spirituals" are two distinct, different types of African-American religious music, yet, again, they can't be said to be totally different musics that have nothing in common.

The primal stew is real enough. What we choose to call it is fair game for debate, but its existence isn't, I should think. If we chosse to deny its existence, we turn musical/cultural evolution into the equivalent of Creationist Absolutism, a set of forgone conclusions just waiting to happen - this is this, that is that, and there you have it. That just ain't so in any kind of life.

Considering the discussion we had about evolution a while back, the notion that it's basic principals somehow don't apply to music kinda tickles me!

I recall that spirited evolution discussion fondly! (Strictly secular spirits!)

Coincidentally, I happen to be reading a book on nature imagry at the moment and one of the points this book makes is that "nature" or "evolution" as conceived as "balance" or "development" is a much abused notion, and that our ideas of nature should include ideas like "catastrophe" and "extinction" and "decay" much more to the fore.

So that we might imagine Albert Murray taking up your organisimic metaphor and saying that while black music may be evolving, it is threatened with extinction at the moment and can only be saved through some sort of intervention. The question is, will that intervention be a return to an earlier form or a mutation into some new one?

Anyhow, I am all for the primal stew image and I can see it's usefulness and I certainly see the real truth in it. BUT, on the other hand, I think we ought to have some specific ideas in mind when we say "blues."

My argument against AllenLowe would be that the formal definition he uses is just too narrow. Too many knowledgable folks say "blues" after they've heard just a few bars or even a few notes. And I don't think when an old timer says Bunk Johnson was a blues player that he meant he played a particular chord sequence.

I think the idea of "blues feel" has a pretty long precedent, and that that idea is actually a lot more important than blues formally defined. Of course someone like Albert Murray likes this vaguer notion of blues because then he gets to withhold "blues" status from whomever he likes, at will.

But when someone says Jack Teagarden could sing or play the blues, they aren't referring to a chord sequence, they are talking about a feel, and that feel is the thing.

I just think that we can put SOME parameters on what that feeling is, as elusive as distinctions may be sometimes.

--eric

[JSngry]

Anyhow, I am all for the primal stew image and I can see it's usefulness and I certainly see the real truth in it. BUT, on the other hand, I think we ought to have some specific ideas in mind when we say "blues."

Personally, I ahve several different ideas in mind when i use the word, depending on how I'm using it. Those who know me usually know what I mean by how I use it. Those who don't know me, well, hey, in the words of Jon Lovitz - GET TO KNOW ME!

Seriously, the quest for "hard and fast" is probably doomed to failure from the outset, just because it's already happened, and this is the aftermath. Everything from here on out is the aftermath, which is why getting as much of the "now" while it's here saves steps over the long haul. Even the best-informed historical research can only provide portions of the whole. So, here we are.

Myself, I'll stick with the multiple usage/meaning of the word, just because I can only do so many things at once, ya'know?

[Dr. Rat]

So is, I would think, understanding the culture by expereincing it firsthand over time. Harder than reading or writing a book (no dis intended, honestly), but probably more informative over the long haul, although any of us who come at it "from the outside" probably need a little outside perspective beforehand. But today is just tommorrow's yesterday, so why not get it yourself now before somebody else writes about it afterwards?

Rhetorical question, btw.

I think there is a value in books, though. No mater how directly you experience something, it gets contextualized, and white folks (or other outsiders) who experience, say, the blues scene in Mississippi directly tend, I've found, to contextualize the experience most crucially as an event in their own personal, distinctly upper-middle-class bildungsroman.

Experience is simply wasted on most people.

--eric

[JSngry]

I would suggest that for people on whom experience is wasted, so would be books.

And vice-versa, maybe.

[Dr. Rat]

I would suggest that for people on whom experience is wasted, so would be books.

And vice-versa, maybe.

Sigh.

[AllenLowe]

well, I'll say again, per Eric, that the problem is that everything is put under the umbrella of the blues - now with Teagarden he was definitely using blues techniques, learned from songs utilizing the blues chord progression, on non-blues songs - but to say my argument is too strict would be to allow us to call anything rhythm changes as long as we feel the connection to rhythm changes - and in reality it's either rhythm changes or it ain't, and if it ain't, it ain't - it doesn't matter that the 1-6-2-5 chord progression is related, or that the bridge uses certain harmonic cycles that other progressions use - - by using blues to label everything we are doing a gross disservice to the music and not allowing ourselves to look outside of that tradition - and, as well, we are confusing cause and effect - blues is effect as much as cause, it is the result (effect) of techniques of pitch and rythm as filtered through African American experiences and it is the cause of certain applied techniques, and has enriched a lot of music - but it is only a portion (if a large portion) of the picture of African American and American music -

Edited March 8, 2005 by AllenLowe

[couw]

Considering the discussion we had about evolution a while back, the notion that it's basic principals somehow don't apply to music kinda tickles me!

they don't?

Where can I find that discussion?

[JSngry]

Hell if I know! It's here somewhere.

[JSngry]

I'm just glad that dictionaries allow for more than one definition of a word. A useful principal, that.

[Dr. Rat]

Considering the discussion we had about evolution a while back, the notion that it's basic principals somehow don't apply to music kinda tickles me!

they don't?

Where can I find that discussion?

God discussion

[John L]

I'm just glad that dictionaries allow for more than one definition of a word. A useful principal, that.

Absolutely. Different defintiions allow for different categorizations that allow for new and different insights.

Whether we want a label that bunches Charlie Parker together with Robert Johnson, or Charlie Parker together with Paul Desmond, depends on what particular perspective we happen to be taking. Different perspectives can coexist peacefully and even complement each other.

Edited March 9, 2005 by John L

[Jim Alfredson]

Got to page five and got werded down. All I can say, with my last two dollars, is that Johnny Taylor and the blues go hand in hand.

Y'all know what I'm talking about.

[John L]

Got to page five and got werded down.  All I can say, with my last two dollars, is that Johnny Taylor and the blues go hand in hand.

Y'all know what I'm talking about.

Yes, hand and hand with both (Little) Johnny Taylor and Johnnie Taylor.

Of course, both of them came from hard gospel. So go figure.

Edited March 9, 2005 by John L

[AllenLowe]

oh no, you're not going to get me into a God discussion - though, to quote a song from an old Broadway show called Red White and Maddox (about the late Governor Lester Maddox), "God is an American..."